See Tagore for disambiguation
Abanindranath Tagore (Bengali: অবণীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর) (August 7, 1871 - December 5, 1951), was the principal artist of the Bengal school and the first major exponent of swadeshi values in Indian art.[1] He was also a noted writer.
Tagore sought to modernize Moghul and Rajput styles in order to counter the influence of Western models of art, as taught in Art Schools under the British Raj. Such was the success of Tagore's work that it was eventually accepted and promoted as a national Indian style within British art institutions.
Personal life and background
Abanindranath Tagore was born in Jorasanko, Kolkata to Gunendranath Tagore. His grandfather was Girindranath Tagore,the second son of "Prince' Dwarkanath Tagore. He is a member of the distinguished Tagore family, and a nephew of the poet Rabindranath Tagore. His grandfather and his elder brother Gaganendranath Tagore were also artists.
Tagore learned art when studying at Sanskrit college in the 1880s. In 1889 he married Suhasini Devi, daughter of Bhujagendra Bhusan Chatterjee, a descendant of Prasanna Coomar Tagore. At this time he left the Sanskrit College after nine years of study and studied English as a special student at St. Xavier's College, which he attended for about a year and a half.
He had a sister Sunayani Devi.[2] His great granddaughter is actress, Sharmila Tagore.
Painting career
Early days
In the early 1890s several illustrations were published in Sadhana magazine, and in Chitrangada, and other works by Rabindranath Tagore. He also illustrated his own books. About the year 1897 he took lessons from the Vice-Principal of the Calcutta Government School of Art, studying in the traditional European academic manner, learning the full range of techniques, but with a particular interest in watercolour. At this time he began to come under the influence of Mughal art, making a number of works based on the life of Krishna in a Mughal-influenced style. After meeting E.B. Havell, Tagore worked with him to revitalise and redefine art teaching at the Calcutta School of art, a project also supported by his brother Gaganendranath, who set up the Indian Society of Oriental Art.
Later career
Abanindranath Tagore believed that Western art was "materialistic" in character, and that India needed to return to its own traditions in order to recover spiritual values. Despite its Indocentric nationalism, this view was already commonplace within British art of the time, stemming from the ideas of the Pre-Raphaelites. Tagore's work also shows the influence of Whistler's Aestheticism. Partly for this reason many British arts administrators were sympathetic to such ideas, especially as Hindu philosophy was becoming increasingly influential in the West following the spread of the Theosophy movement. Tagore believed that Indian traditions could be adapted to express these new values, and to promote a progressive Indian national culture.
With the success of Tagore's ideas, he came into contact with other Asian artists whose work was comparable to his own. In his later work, he began to incorporate elements of Chinese and Japanese calligraphic traditions into his art, seeking to construct a model for a modern pan-Asian artistic tradition which would merge the common aspects of Eastern spiritual and artistic culture.
His close students included Nandalal Bose, Jamini Roy and Kalipada Ghoshal.
For Abanindranath, the house he grew up in (5 Dwarakanath Tagore Lane) and its companion house (6 Dwarakanath Tagore Lane) connected two cultural worlds -- 'white town' (where the British colonizers lived) and 'black town' (where the natives lived). According to architectural historian Swati Chattopadhay, Abanindranath "used the Bengali meaning of the word, Jorasanko -- 'double bridge' to develop this idea in the form of a mythical map of the city. The map is, indeed, not of Calcutta, but an imaginary city, Halisahar, and is the central guide in a children's story Putur Boi (Putu's Book). The nineteenth-century place names of Calcutta, however, appear on this map, thus suggesting we read this imaginary city with the colonial city as a frame of reference. The map uses the structure of a board game—golokdham—and shows a city divided along a main artery; on one side a lion-gate leads to the Lal-Dighi in the middle of which is the 'white island.'[3]
The publication of Rabanindrath Tagore's Gitanjali in English brought the Tagore family international renown, which helped to make Abanindranath's artistic projects better known in the west.
He contributed significantly to the Bengali literature beside his devotion towards painting. He was also a great teacher. He taught painting in his own style.
References
- ^ Abanindranath Tagore, A Survey of the Master’s Life and Work by Mukul Dey, reprinted from "Abanindra Number," The Visva-Bharati Quarterly, May – Oct. 1942.
- ^ http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=40949
- ^ Swati Chattopadhyay, Representing Calcutta: Modernity, Nationalism, and the Colonial Uncanny. Routledge 2006.
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